Mark MauerMatthew Flesicher wrote a piece in the news section about the County calling an “emergency” over the properly permitted art project held in the Arroyo Seco in September.
Standing on a bridge overlooking the confluence of the Arroyo Seco and Los Angeles rivers, Friends of the Los Angeles River founder Lewis MacAdams stares at the cement-walled streams and indulges in a moment of nostalgia. “This was the birthplace of FoLAR,” he says of the desolate area. “I came down here one day and saw how blighted and disgusting it was and just thought, ‘I have to do something about this.’ ”
Twenty-two years after MacAdams founded FoLAR, however, the stretch of river that inspired him has landed his group in a bizarre battle with County Supervisor Gloria Molina, leaving the nonprofit organization potentially liable for thousands of dollars in cleanup costs.
Read the rest of Fleischer's article here.
To see part of what's already been lost, check out the before and after photos after the jump, showing the whitewash that destroyed several of the huge murals. Of course, it didn't stay whitewashed for more than a few days: sloppy bombing tags quickly covered the area, as anyone would know, making me wonder, what was the point of all of this anyway? Anyone would hbe hard pressed to say it looks better now than it did before.
At least in this case, they stopped before completely wiping out the piece.
Here are a couple more of the event as it happened in September, 2007.
All photos by Mark Mauer. There are a lot more posted here from when the event took place. Check them out here (first group), here, here,
and here.
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